A whole lotta sense...

Bush's belief in a worldwide Islamist conspiracy is foolish and dangerous

We can only see off the serious threat we face if we separate real Muslim grievances from al-Qaida's homicidal mania

Max Hastings
Monday August 14, 2006
The Guardian

George Bush sometimes sounds more like the Mahdi, preaching jihad against infidels, than the leader of a western democracy.

In his regular radio address to the American people on Saturday he linked the British alleged aircraft plotters with Hizbullah in Lebanon, and these in turn with the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

All, said the president of the world's most powerful nation, share a "totalitarian ideology", and a desire to "establish a safe haven from which to attack free nations". Bush's remarks put me in mind of a proverb attributed to Ali ibn Abu Talib: "He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, and he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere."

In the United States a disturbingly large minority of people - polls suggest around 40% - remain willing to accept Bush's assertions that Americans and their allies, which chiefly means the British, are faced with a single global conspiracy by Islamic fundamentalists to destroy our societies.

In less credulous Britain one could nowadays fit into an old-fashioned telephone box those who believe anything Bush or Tony Blair says about foreign policy.

The full article is well worth reading.